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She gives me a bright, satisfied smile. Like she owed me an enormous favor and she is pleased to have repaid a small part of it.
Already she’s such a different person than she was when I first met her. She was distant, wary, wounded—like an injured animal recoiling from a kind touch. And now she walks with a firm stride, holds her chin high, and radiates an eager confidence when she signs. I think I underestimated how much the ability to communicate affects one’s sense of worth. Being cut off from others, unable to express thoughts and feelings, can sap a person’s inner strength quickly, driving them into loneliness.
As we continue walking, I voice some of my thoughts to Bede. “I think the King took the tongues of the former concubines to isolate them from each other. To break apart bonds and ruin friendships, because he felt threatened by them.”
She starts signing immediately. Yes. He said all the gossiping whores his father owned must be taught a lesson. He said the secrets we knew must stay locked away. We weren’t allowed writing material, either, and if one of us did obtain permission to write a note, a list, or a letter, it had to be checked personally by Lord Venedict or Lady Reese. The other servants were allowed to write and communicate—only the former concubines were subjected to this treatment.
“The King is a piece of shit,” I say firmly. I’ve never expressed the sentiment out loud, and it feels good. Rebellious… and right.
Some of us in the House used to go down on each other, Bede confides. He despised us for that, too. He said our tongues were only supposed to please his father, and now that the old king was dead, we wouldn’t need them anymore.
I’m not sure how to ask the question that’s been niggling at my mind ever since I met her. “Did he… take anything else from you?” The moment I say it, I realize it’s too intimate, too invasive a question. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that, and I shouldn’t have asked.”
But she’s already signing in response. He removed the genitals of his father’s first tier of concubines. I was in the second tier, so I escaped that torture.
“Small mercies,” I say quietly.
When the procession of women departed from the palace, I didn’t see everyone who joined. Perhaps some of those former concubines joined our exodus, exposing scars beyond what the rest of us carried. Guilt plucks at my heart, guilt that I didn’t stay in the city and see to it that everyone who left the palace with me found a more permanent haven after that first night. But I couldn’t waste any time. I had to leave.
I have to save Rupert. Whatever sympathy I may feel for others, he’s the person I care about most fervently, the one I can’t live without.
We trek onward through the darkening forest. Now that we’ve passed through the fringes of it, I realize it’s not a gentle sort of wood, with whispering foliage and leafy undergrowth and little animals squeaking and scurrying through the dry leaves. No, this is a thick, malevolent, mountainous forest of close-set, ponderous black trunks covered in scales of heavy bark. Sharp branches jut outward from each tree like broken teeth. Serrated vines twist through the bristling undergrowth, tearing at our clothes and hair. Beneath our feet, jagged stones and long, thorny stems poke through the crackling leaves.
“I thought the Elves were all about embracing nature, nourishing its beauty,” I mutter as we tramp onward, our path lit by a small lantern Enthel carries.
“They are,” she replies. “This belt of the forest is a deterrent, to keep humans out and convince them they must be going the wrong way.”
“I think they did the job a little too well, love,” says Lannau, drawing a knife from her belt and cutting away a cluster of thorns that has snagged her traveling cloak. “This is so much worse than the last time we visited.”
“How long ago did you visit?” I ask.
“A decade or so.”
My heart sinks a little. Ten years is a long time. Anything could have changed, and these two might not be entirely prepared for what we’ll encounter.
What if Rupert’s father is dead? How will I learn his name then?
If that happens, I’ll have to go back to Giltos, kidnap the King somehow, and torture him into telling me Rupert’s true name. Either that, or keep him as my prisoner for the rest of Rupert’s life, muzzled so he can’t give Rupert any commands.
No, that won’t work. Such a plan isn’t practical—too many holes, too many things that could go terribly wrong.
I have to find out Rupert’s true name.
A knot of pain twists through my lower belly, and I nearly whimper as I struggle forward through the darkness. Each time I shove aside a branch, I wish I had gloves—the sticks are abrasive, and some of the broken ones lacerate my palms.
Bede and I stay close behind the two Elven women, who are using little bursts of pale-green magic to untangle the forest in the direction we need to go. Vines uncoil and branches bend back temporarily, but they close behind us almost instantly with a whip-sharp snapping of vines and a groaning creak of wood.
“Pace yourself,” I hear Enthel murmur to her wife. “It seems we have a long way to go. As you said, the barriers are much thicker than they used to be.”
Another stab of pain wrenches through my body.
Usually, my cramps are manageable with the help of certain herbs and tonics that I keep around the house. But I have no such medicine now. My womb feels as if a giant hand is squeezing it, over and over. Or maybe it feels as though every muscle inside me has gone rigid as the trees, and those stiff muscles are all quaking and creaking stiffly, agonizingly. Nausea shoots into my belly, tightening my throat.
I inhale through my nose, blow out through my mouth, and keep walking. One foot after the other, again and again, when all I want to do is lie down on a soft bed, pin a hot-water bottle to my abdomen, and curl up into a ball of misery.
Perhaps I should ask the Elves for help with the pain. Maybe they could do something. But they need their magic to fight the forest, which is growing denser and thornier by the second.
And so continues the worst night of my entire life. My mind sinks into a dogged, determined blur, with the only focused thought being one more step. The night is a sodden weight on my shoulders, and the forest rips at me with its claws, and the strained muscles in my belly creak and convulse, while I fight the urge to vomit and force myself to inhale and expel air.
